THE COURIER recently conducted a housing survey amongst a selection of University students currently renting private accommodation in Aberystwyth. This survey was designed to determine the quality of housing currently on offer to students.

Students were asked a small sample of questions about their housing, ranging from the problems they had finding it, to the common problems and issues that have arisen.

The first question students were asked was “How much trouble did you have finding your current room or house?”, with a surprising 50% of people having had no trouble at all finding their accommodation, and less than a quarter experiencing severe problems in obtaining housing. These results proved interesting, as they suggested that accommodation was readily available for students even though there is a major lack of student housing in Aberystwyth. Perhaps this suggests that the quality of the available housing for the 50% was not up to a decent standard. This could be reflected in the responses to the questions that followed, regarding problems with housing.

Almost half of the students that were asked stated that they had experienced problems with their accommodation after they’d moved in. Of those who had experienced problems, almost three-quarters said the problems had not been promptly dealt with by their landlords or letting agencies, and more than half have still not had their problems solved at all.

When the students who took part in the survey were asked whether or not they believed their housing was good value for money, more than half were adamant that it was not. This emphasises the poor quality of housing on offer for students in Aberystwyth and the lack of responsibility that the landlords and letting agencies are accepting for their own properties and clients.

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